The report James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, released to the Senate Armed Services Committee does not label Iran and Hezbollah as a terrorist threat – a designation both the country and group earned in the report for the last four years. Never mind that the report says Iran is a potential source of cyber attacks and Iranian intelligence considers the United States its primary threat. The country was stripped of its terrorism label because it was so valiant in fighting the Islamic State – something that helps it gain greater influence in the Middle East. David Daoud writes in The Tower Magazine, “The Middle East is witnessing the birth of a new Persian empire, under the aegis of the Islamic Republic of Iran. … Tehran has contracted this clandestine conquest out to an ever-expanding list of loyal proxies. They mutate and fracture into new entities, adopt new names, and operate in different roles and locations; but this constellation of proxies orbits around Iran, effectively masking the Islamic Republic’s increasing control over the Middle East.” The Obama administration is wrapping up the nuclear talks with Iran, and it needs all the political firepower it can get to either ram the treaty through the Senate or circumvent the U.S. political process at the UN. Is the revision to the threat level coincidence? We think not. More…